Spam and Jelly
by Luna Lovegood5
Summary: The Doctor has to learn that the acceptance of a new man does not necessarily lead to forgetting the old one. TenxRose, set about a month post regeneration.


**Spam and Jelly**

**A/N:** The ninth of thirteen Doctor/Rose centric stories I'm planning on writing throughout series three due to the simple fact that I miss them.

--

The Doctor bounces impatiently on the balls of his feet, tossing the psychic paper from one hand to the other as he waits in the console room. Rose is taking an _awfully _long time to get changed.

Not that she's normally what one could call _speedy _in such matters, but still. It's never taken her this long before. He's pretty sure that it doesn't take an extra half an hour just to find a pretty dress – and even if it does, he maintains that it's a _very_ long time to be made to wait, especially when he's hungry. Making someone wait when they're hungry is positively rude, he decides, and makes a mental note to tell Rose so when she finally emerges from the wardrobe room.

Their imminent arrival at the infamous Restaurant at the End of the Universe he's been bragging about for weeks would certainly go a long way to resolving his hunger issues, but he can't see that happening any time soon unless he goes and throws a dress on Rose himself. She has obviously lost the ability to clothe herself somewhere between the Middle Ages this morning and Greece this afternoon.

It's during moments of imminent starvation such as this that the Doctor begins to wonder why he ever voluntarily chooses to travel with women.

He supposes that, as the very impressive Last of the Time Lords, he should be above such trivial matters as hunger, not to mention a sudden craving for Martian steak that can only be satisfied by Rose's getting a move on. However, the point remains that he's really _not _above such trivial things, he really _is _hungry, and he really _does _want a Martian steak (preferably with chips, but he's even beginning to entertain the possibility of salad at this point). And so, mind made up and stomach rumbling, he sets off to the wardrobe room, already mentally preparing a speech in his defence should she be half-ready and insistent that she needs longer.

The Doctor's really getting into the swing of his mental protestations to her potential application for more changing time (_"That seventh dress is really rather fetching. Oh, no, not the other one. Please don't try the first one on again!"_, _"No-one will care what your dress looks like, Rose; the waiters there are blue"_) when he finds himself in the wardrobe room and has to cut himself short of dismissing his own statement in a rather poor imitation of Rose's accent.

"Rose, are you in there? How long does it _really _– "

He stops in his tracks, feet halting with his words. She's still in her jeans and tshirt. She hasn't even begun to get ready. And, when she turns around, he thinks he knows why. There are tear-tracks down her cheeks, and she's clutching a very familiar leather jacket.

"Wha – where did you…?"

For once, the Doctor doesn't know what to say. Rose does, though. "You kept it," she whispers, apparently too shocked to feel guilty or awkward about having been found sniffling over his clothes, or even to stuff the jacket behind her back and allow him to pretend he never saw it. "Just…chucked in with the Edwardian stuff. But you kept it."

He doesn't quite know why that's so important to her, but something tells him it's more than simply having found the jacket of an effectively dead man.

"I always do," he says, carefully, taking a step towards her. "Rose – "

"Sorry," she says suddenly, sniffing and pretending to brighten as she wipes her nose and holds the jacket behind her, falling back into their usual routine of pretend-it-never-happened-and-move-right-on. She's a very bad actress. "Being silly. I'll just – " He hears the sound of her hands tightening on the leather behind her as though she can't quite give it up, not even to pretend that everything is normal or that she's as fine with this regeneration as he originally thought she was.

_Stupidly _thought she was, he realises now, wondering how he could ever have expected her to move on so completely and quickly after all they shared together. Of course she'd miss the other him. She's only human, a young, human girl who had everything she'd known for the past year snatched away from her in the blink of an eye. The transition period is never easy, no matter how deep companion's degree of attachment to him; he knows that from experience. Why hadn't he seen it coming with Rose, then? Why had he taken the easy route and allowed himself to believe that everything was perfectly fine, the past utterly forgotten?

Perhaps he's just answered his own question.

He takes another step forwards. Rose takes the slightest one back, backing into the clothes railing behind her, and he winces.

"It's OK," she says quickly, a little flustered, the possible repercussions of being caught with the jacket obviously catching up with her. "I'll just…get changed, yeah? You can go back to the console room now. If you want," Rose adds hastily, just in case he takes that offensively, and he notes that he's never seen her babble like this before. "Sorry I kept you waiting. Dinner at the end of the universe, can't be late for that, can we?"

The Doctor decides not to point out the fact that they're in a time machine. They could spend an eternity in this room, staring each other out, and still be in perfect time for dinner. He takes a third step towards her, and this time there's no room for her to back away into. She swallows and stands her ground, a faint blush rising to her cheeks as she meets his eye.

"Dinner's not important," he tells her eventually, now close enough to put his hands on her arms, almost forcing her to look at him with no more tools at his disposal than a lowered head and a quiet voice. "How about we go another day, hm?"

"Oh, no, I – "

But he's reached behind her for the jacket. She freezes, no clue what he's about to do next, looking almost fearful of him becoming angry or feeling rejected – or, worse, throwing the jacket away now that she's found it again. It's not that she _dislikes_ this version of him, or even that she wants him to change back. She just misses the man he used to be sometimes, that's all, and finding the jacket so unexpectedly had acted as a painful reminder of how things used to be.

"Long time since I've seen this," the Doctor muses, running his hands across the material. It looks strange next the brown suit, contrasting and complimenting as though the past and future are mingling in a reminder that somewhere, behind all the pinstripes and hair, the leather-jacketed man is still very much a part of who he is.

"I don't want him back," Rose blurts suddenly, then shrinks back as though she's done something terribly wrong. "I just sort of…found it, and I haven't seen it since you – since – " She can't seem to finish the sentence.

To Rose's utter bemusement, the Doctor smiles. "I know."

How can he possibly know? How _can_ he understand what it's like to stumble across a reminder of a dead man who is somehow still very much alive in the person standing before her right this very moment? He experiences the regenerations, but he's never had to deal with them from this end of the spectrum. She wonders if all his companions felt this way: stuck in limbo, alternating between grasping for anything, everything, just the tiniest sign of the man he used to be and then pushing it away, scared, when she finds it. She's so terrified he's going to change once again before she's had a chance to really appreciate him, to _learn_ him, that she feels horribly guilty every time she as much as thinks of the man he used to be. She doesn't want to realise only too late that she's missed the chance to fall in love in again because she's been too busy wishing for a man who could never come back.

But obviously he _does_ know, because he's pulled her forward a step and he's putting the jacket around her shoulders, keeping it closed at the front with hands that are both right and wrong all at the same time. He moves one of them and wipes the drying tear-tracks from her face, smiling in such a quiet, gentle way that she can't quite believe this is the same man who spends half his life beaming at her.

She'd ask why, what he's doing, but she can't find her voice. She can't even take her eyes off his, both wonderfully new and comfortingly familiar at once, as she wonders if this sudden closeness means he's going to kiss her. He never would have before, she knows, but anything's a possibility with this new, new Doctor.

"I think you should keep it," he says, startling her despite his quiet tone. She can feel his words dancing across her skin, but somehow the spell is broken.

Rose blinks and says the first thing that comes into her head. "It won't go with my dress."

The Doctor bursts into laughter and she can't help but smile as she remembers why she wants him to stay.

"Dinner can wait," he insists, grinning down at her and still holding the jacket about her shoulders. "We've got all the time in the world for that."

"But aren't you hungry?" Rose asks, feeling more than a little guilty as she remembers his earlier instructions to dress quickly.

The Doctor wrinkles his nose and waves a hand. "Nah, don't worry about me. Besides, who wants to go to boring old dinner? We've got some talking to do, and restaurants aren't the best place for that. Because really, eating with your mouth open, Rose? I don't care what the Slitheen think; it is _not_ attractive."

His good mood is infectious. She gives a true, if watery, grin in return, and he releases the front of the jacket to grab her hand and lead her out into the corridor.

"Isn't that a bit _domestic _for you, Doctor?" she teases, and he notes the use of his name said as though he's still the same person inside to her. There's far less doubt in her voice when she says it now. "_Talking_?"

"Absolutely," the Doctor confirms, continuing on his way all the same. She's fallen into step beside him, now, walking as a willing equal rather than being pulled along behind. Their hands swing between them. "So much for you not knowing me, Rose Tyler – I've a fair bit of catching up to do with _you_, don't you think?"

He'd had no idea that she still felt like this, that something as mundane as a jacket could be the trigger for such emotions. He had simply taken it for granted that, having accepted the new him, she couldn't possibly miss the way he used to be, taken it as read that he knows her as well as he always did.

In fact, she's probably changed just as much as him, and he has a whole new Rose Tyler to get to know.

Rose, for her part, just can't believe that they're actually going to talk about this, rather than sweeping it under the carpet as they do with everything else. Perhaps the change has been good for him, after all.

"Hardly the end of the universe," he says, as they enter the kitchen, "but it'll do, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I think so," she replies quietly, smiling up at him. "Good enough for me."

"And what would Miss Tyler like for dinner? We have the very expansive range of, uh – " The Doctor drops her hand and bounds around the kitchen to scan the cupboards. Rose watches from the doorway, not entirely sure that his exuberance should be making her smile when she was missing a much less energetic man only minutes before. "Beans on toast, Spam on toast, alphabetti-spaghetti on toast, or…asparagus on toast. Or even all four, if you're feeling brave." He frowns, looking a bit disgusted at the prospect of asparagus and Spam, before opening the fridge and beaming once again. "_Or_," he says, dragging out the world impressively, "you could always choose the special of the day." He moves out of the way and allows her to see the contents of the fridge. "Lime jelly! What'll it be?"

One dinner of Spam and jelly later, they migrate to the library, Rose having persuaded the Doctor that he might even like some of her girly romance films in this body. It doesn't go unnoticed that she leaves the jacket hanging on the back of her chair.

--

He catches her wearing it, sometimes, draped over tshirts and dresses and pyjamas, and even once a towel, covering her rapidly drying shoulders as she reads by the green light of the time rotor. He doesn't know whether to be flattered or jealous.

"If I regenerate again," he begins, and Rose looks up, startled, all her calm tranquillity shattered, " – not saying I will, mind you, I'm not exactly planning on it just yet – " he adds, and she shoots him a frightened, half-defiant look that clearly says, _you'd better not be_. "_If _– or rather when, because I will, it's just a case of hoping it's not soon – _when _I regenerate again, would you wear _my_ jacket?"

Rose laughs, relieved. She'd been convinced he was going to ask if she'd stay, that he didn't know her well enough to realise she'd always be here. "No," she says, simply, closing her book and looking at him in amusement. Alright then, jealous it is. "I'd wear your shoes."

He wasn't expecting _that_. "Why?" She thinks it's the shortest question she's ever heard him ask.

"Anyone can wear a suit," Rose shrugs. "But you're the only person I know who wears those shoes with it. They're you," she adds, as though it's as simple as that, and he has a sudden image of jumble-sale Rose, covered from head to foot in various items from each of his incarnations that he's refused to let go. He's so busy imagining her trip over a lengthy scarf that he doesn't notice she's got up and moved over to him until he feels a light tugging on his tie.

"But don't go changing for a while yet, yeah?" she requests, suddenly serious. "I sort of want to keep this you."


End file.
